Week 5: Final Post

This week had a structured discussion format. Each person posted a topic, then everyone made one observation either about the topic or about the initial post itself. Then the original poster made a closing comment. I found this structure and smaller groups much more helpful then the free-for-all postings of previous weeks. Because of the size of the group, there were four areas of discussion.

“Do” Activities
Topic was raised by Alia. Initially focusing on the ability to reinforce and expense, observations pointed out that “Do” activities could be used before the absorb part of the presentation, and that they can be used for testing.

Learning Games and Design
This was my topic as game design is something of interest to me. The initial post warned against games both for the chance of growing too large and from not really doing their job – teaching the topic. An additional warning on sticking to intent and knowing it has done its job was raised. Overall, games were seen as beneficial tools, but requiring proper application.

More on Games and Simulations
Topic raised by William. His focus was on the utility of games, particularly in getting students engaged in what are otherwise dry topics. It was pointed out that there are tools to assist in creating games, as not every ID has the skills to create games from scratch.

Absorb Activities
Topic raised by David. David focused on the “ebb and flow” of Do and Absorb activities, the idea that these need to work in partnership to be truly effective. Absorb activities provide a needed change of pace in the process of learning. It was also observed that the Absorb needs to be able to motivate the learner into the Do type of activity.

Again, I found this controlled discussion format much more beneficial than free structured discussion on the boards. Alia observed it did not feel like a true discussion. I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. Freedom is often overrated in learning environments.

My most important contribution was my own topic, although I did get an inspiration point for making observations about the sequencing of activities. That is, that Do really can come before Absorb. But, within my topic the quote about when a designer has achieved perfection is what I really liked. There is a tendency in the eLearning world, particularly if connected to the net, to add more and more until something is bloated beyond use. The hours of material to download for a single day’s discussion would be an example from the current eLearning conference is a good example. Simplify, simplify.

Week 7: What's on Your Mind?

What’s on your mind? Chapters 6 & 7

This discussion was free form, with students raising questions and topics of interest to them in the material that we had covered.

There was initial discussion about the “Scenario Example” and what it implies for the skill set needed by the Instructional Designer. The Scenario Centered lessons were held to be superior for learners, but higher in time investment.

Reusable versus Repurposed content was a big topic for this week. First clarification or the terms was needed. A conversation that should have been part of this definition was missed – is something reusable only with in a course? An institution? The limits and intent of reusability was unclear to many students, and various strategies were attempted to label it.

Reusable topics were seen as a core feature of good technical writing. Questions remained about the limits of applicability. Within a course? Within a field? Within the sum of all knowledge?

Another topic was a critique of the book itself. Alia raised the issue of focus and direction of the Horton material. In particular how it relates to creating material in an academic setting. I gave my own opinion that Horton did not seem to have experience in an academic setting, as all his examples are related to corporate training. This seemed to provoke some of the first thinking about the source of our main course book and whether or not it’s the bible of writing eLearning materials.

My best contribution was backing up Alia’s initial observation questioning the intent and background of Horton’s writing. Alia asked if he wasn’t addressing topics, my observation changed it to question if there was a gap in his knowledge and background. William awarded this an inspiration point as it caused him to do a review of Horton’s material to date.

Seven Weeks and a Thousand Dollars

Having just come off the discussion boards for my team, I can't help but ask, "This is state of the art education?"

Signing up for distance learning, I expected two things before going in, 1) self pacing, 2) individual assessment.

The course outline at the beginning set my expectations for massive number of small projects, and many things being dependent on working with other people. The upshot, the people I am working with, while well intentioned, do not have the comfort level with the tools, or the knowledge of the subject matter, to move things forward quickly. Myself and another student being in significantly different timezones exacerbates the problem.

We clearly have a team leader, but no one, including that leader, have put forward that the person is it. Instead we try to muddle through with consensus on everything when clearly there is no time to form consensus.

But, circling back to my topic, and a question that has come up in our boards, "What's in it for me." I've yet to see any benefit to this class that I would have had over just reading the books I was reading and fiddling the bits. I've downloaded the EdWeb Analysis and Design document, which to my mind should be occupying my and the cohorts time. Instead, all of our attention is drawn to hosting a session of a web based conference. Why anyone would want to attend the conference is beyond me, clearly it will be a case of the newly opened eyes leading the blind.

I'm past the drop add point, and owe it to the people in the group I'm with to stay with the project and do my part. Still, given what I've learned in seven weeks and at the cost of a thousand dollars, I don't have much hope for what fourteen weeks and two thousand dollars will have gained me. After that, I will need to take a long look at the class plans for the rest of the program.

For now, I'll go back to the boards and see what I can contribute, and what I can learn.

Week 4: What Strategies…?

Week 4: What Strategies…?

1. Describe the instructional strategies we've used, and why you believe we've used them.
2. Refer to the Common Instructional Values list we just completed (the version compiled by Dave and Joni and posted under Course Home on Sunday night). Have the strategies we've used addressed each value? If not, what is missing and what could we do about? Or, if we could improve an area, what and how?

The nature of this topic lent itself to being wide ranging and varied. Even with only eight people in the conversation, a lot of ground was covered. To organize, I'll pull out the main activities:

Scavenger Hunt

• was learner centered
• was in context
• active and encouraged exploration
• non-threatening
  

Discussion Topics as a Strategy

• learner centered
• social and collaborative
• small groups more contextual, large groups more social
  

Group Work

• learner centered
• collaborative (no surprise)
• reflective and exploratory
• contextual, pulling the learners forward into the course
  

Discussion Moderation as a Strategy

• humanize instructors
• encourage students to take ownership of learning
• supportive
  

Technology Use

• removed fear of tools
• learner centered - engaged students in activities
• contextual, could clearly be used in the real world

Teaming

• social, encouraged students to know each other, and humanize each other
  
• learner centered
  

Personal Stories

• learner centered
• reflective
• social, without being collaborative
  

All of these had interesting sub-discussions. In particular the admonition that people taking this program tend to be technology geeks, always using the latest tool. A theme running through all of them was the social aspect of learning, and how they might encourage it. My own contribution was that Teaming was a learning strategy. Dividing people into teams and giving them simple, social, tasks allows the team spirit to arise before the actual project part of the work began.

"Dividing in to teams was a strategy in itself, as it immediately provided group to identify with, even though the groups had tasks that were non-competitive."

And, as my post pointed out the subject matter the initial teamwork involved allowed the group to pull together and humanize each other. The discussion as whole really focused on social aspects of learning, and how people interact to achieve their learning goals. Limiting and enabling aspects of technology were throughout the discussion.

Week 3: Instructor-led vs. Learner-led

For this discussion, let's focus on the differences between and purposes of instructor-led vs. learner-led eLearning courses. What: 1) content areas, 2) learning audiences, and 3) types of learning activities are best addressed in instructor-led eLearning courses? Learner-led eLearning courses? Why?

Initial posts discussed definition of terms, with some color on individuals’ observations. One of them being that most any course must start being instructor led before it can move on to being learner led. There was a question about whether e-learning, because of the design work going in to it, is inherently instructor led. But, this was correctly pointed out that making resources available isn’t the same as deciding in which order to take them in.

Joni injected the topic of “relevance” and questioned if this could be established by instructor led learning. My personal feeling is this question was a bit of a red-herring. The question of relevance is frequently decided before the learner ever starts the course. As to the question can the instructor establish relevance, and maybe I’m misunderstanding the question, the answer is a resounding yes.

The pattern most of the group had experience with was grounding the students, then moving on to learner-led activities. Interesting about that is the number of people in the group whose background in teaching is with high school age students. Much of the material for this class assumes we are dealing with mature learners with a high degree of self motivation. This is frequently not the case, and as e-learning becomes more common, driving tools down to “immature” learners will be more and more important.

My best contribution was pointing out that we have to work with less than ideal students. As organizations and groups want e-Learning as part of their organization, the more designers need to be aware of the actual students they are dealing with, as the ideal solution may not be the best solution for the actual students. I feel this is my best contribution as Dave assigned an inspiration point for having provided a real world example of some of the challenges faced in creating e-learning tools.

Week 2: Learning Objectives and our own work

Week 2

The discussion started by asking; “From your perspective, why are learning objectives important for your own eLearning projects? What role do/will they play in your eLearning work?” There was initial discussion about the importance of defining learning objectives to limit the scope of work.

Blooms Taxonomy was brought up, and shown to be known to a good number of the cadre and very useful in writing lessons. This was new material for me and required additional research to understand.

Rubrics were also mentioned, developing accurate and meaningful evaluation. I had only recently seen a grading rubric before, so this subtopic was also useful and led to additional reading.

These flowered in to conversation about real world objectives and when they were used, or not used in particular experiences. A theme that developed was “instructional alignment”, the idea that learning objectives needed to map to a real world student goal.

This circled back to a question of why they were important for eLearning in particular. It had been put forward, and agreed, that they were good for everything. But, the focus on what did they do for eLearning was seen as important. There seemed to be consensus that they were important because of limitations inherent in eLearning. In particular, structured course presentation and clear goals for the learner are the result of well defined learning objectives.

My best contribution to the discussion was my initial post, which included: I've been trying to spin out objectives without getting down to the level of curriculum design. I work for a private institution that teaches English. Setting objectives like, "The student can use adjectives correctly" are going to be too broad. I imagine I would need to get specific, "Provided a list of adjectives the student can pick appropriate answers."

The reason for this was it prompted a reply Joni that included a link to Bloom’s Taxonomy, which was new information to several of the participants in the discussion, myself included. Also, in trying to get specific with the learning objective, I conflated learning objects with learning objectives. As I wasn’t alone in having problems with the words, it is fortunate that someone made the mistake and it could be addressed. Embarrassing, but helpful.

Thoughts on Discussion Summaries

Before I start writing discussion summaries, I need to rant about the discussions themselves.

I've not found the discussion particularly interesting or useful. We have had three so far, and I find one of two things happens: 1) I post an observation made by someone else, 2) I have no interest in the topic itself, and hence, no thoughts to contribute.

The observations by someone else really irritates me. We are supposed to participate in the discussion, but if someone else has already posted what you observed what are you supposed to post, "Me too!" Or perhaps it is better to force yourself to make some additional observation, that doesn't really drive the discussion forward, but does show that you are posting and reading. In any event, I find this portion of the course a major irritant, and likely will mean I do poorly in the class overall as a result. Not an inspiring start to my masters work. I think I have two days in which I could drop the course, but then what? Then I have nothing, that's what.

Not happy.